Re: [Evolution] help with English "top post msg"

[Brewster Gillett <bg fdi us>]

> > On Fri, 2010-09-03 at 08:20 +0900, nomnex wrote:

> > > Many people do not read quotes in the messages
> > > by the simple fact they are so accustomed
> > > to top posting answers (in the Outlook way). 
> >
> > bg:
> >
> > Mild correction, sir - top posting is not "The Outlook Way".
> > Outlook will accommodate proper bottom posting just as readily
> > as any other email client software.
> >
> > Top-posting, properly assigned its "way" description, would
> > be best described as "Clueless Newbie Way" :-)
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> >
> > Brewster

Bill Kenworthy wrote:

> Or perhaps top posting should be described "the way most of the world
> does it despite being constantly chivvied by old timers on the internet
> that bottom posting is the only way." - that tells me something :)

bg:

It apparently doesn't tell you that classic life lesson I learned when I
was teenage - just because 80% of the world does something a certain
way, that does not mean it is the right way to do it. All this tells us
is that, when it comes to even minimal Net standards aimed at making
communications more readable for all (a strong value in the early days)
80% of the users of the net are, on the evidence, indeed Clueless
Newbies.

BillK:

> Live and let live and get on with your life, be tollerant.

bg:

I'm afraid I have a spot of difficulty feeling tolerant towards
care-less practices which make my internet use more difficult.

BillK:

> Actually, a far far greater sin is not trimming messages - 

bg:

True, but........
Actually that is the invariable handmaiden of the top-posting
attitude, and the top-posting process itself. And a classical
manifestation of the Clueless Newbie condition, wherein the sufferer
doesn't know their email reply editor function well enough to be
*able* to trim the backquotes.

There is a good and very understandable technical reason for the
cursor positioning having led so many people astray, which I have
already beaten to death on this forum and others. Once you recognize the
default positioning of the cursor when having entered "REPLY" mode in
most email software, if you think through the process, it is easy to
understand why generations of email users, almost certainly tragically
mentorless, could have made exactly the reverse of the logical decision
which is presented by that placement.

Tolerance? No. Contempt is more like it.

BillK:
> And I am bottom posting because thats the way it was already organised.
>
> :)
> BillK

bg:

And not so incidentally because on most lists of this sort you will
eventually be asked specifically to refrain from top-posting if
you do it often enough.

Just ask yourself - would you prefer to have read this exchange in
backwards chronological sequence? If so, why? We don't live our
lives that way (at least most of us don't<g>).

Cordially,

Brewster

-- 
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Embrace a sharing community of sustainable justice low-carbon diversity
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W. Brewster Gillett             bg fdi us            Portland, OR  USA
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Simply because you don't like to hear it, that doesn't make it untrue.
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